


In Search of a Name

by DestielsDestiny



Series: I'm a doctor, not a dictionary entry [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: 5+1 Things, Assisted Suicide, Custody Arrangements, Divorce, Gen, M/M, Multi, OT3, Soulmates, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:29:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, Eight things people called Leonard H. McCoy that didn’t stick, and the two things(and people) that stuck like glue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Search of a Name

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, they’re not mine.  
> A/N: My first Star Trek story, non beta read, all mistakes are mine.  
> If anyone's interested, there's now a companion piece to this, in an attempt to console my rather desolate heart after the depressing way I left Bones' relationship with his daughter. I'm working on another companion piece as well, but it may take a while.

1\. Leonard Horatio

Leonard Horatio McCoy was born on an unremarkable day in autumn, to an old sawbones of a father, and a southern belle of a mother. Eleanor McCoy came from a long line of proud naval brats, and had a line of deceased male relatives named for a certain famed fictional 17th century admiral a mile long. 

In the interests of fairness, she let her husband pick the arguably less ostentatious moniker of Leonard, commemorating David’s equally long line of relatives in the healing professions, an incidental flash of foresight which the babe’s mother would always argue was pure coincidence. In Eleanor’s mind, Leonard Horatio could just have easily ended up becoming a proud seafaring naval officer. 

Unfortunately, neither of Leonard’s parents lived to see him eventually fulfill both their hefty legacies by venturing out into the black to be guided by the stars, albeit on a rather different version of tall ship. 

As it was, Leonard Horatio grew up like a typical southern boy, only hearing his full name when he was in trouble-which was admittedly far less often then most boys his age. 

Whatever the reason, by the time he reached his twenties, Leonard Horatio McCoy only heard his full name at official functions, as even his parents had given up using it long ago. 

2\. Lenny

With his full name considered too long for a little boy, Leonard’s parents needed something to call their beloved only child, an issue which his Grandma McCoy settled the first time she saw the babe. 

“He’s a Lenny,” she declared, with the steely conviction of a woman who’d once broken the family mold by daring to name her son something that didn’t begin with an L, after spending a lifetime figuring out increasingly creative variations on a two-syllable name. 

So Lenny he was, from birth until his first day of primary, when the freshly turned six year old firmly declared that Lenny was a little boy’s name, and as he was no longer little, he had decided to go by the far more grown up Len. 

The one exception to this was his grandmother, who continued to call him Lenny until her death when Len was 13. When she died, any last fading spark of Lenny that was still left inside Len was buried with her. 

3\. Len  
Lenny becomes Len when he turns six, and the name sticks. By October of first grade, everyone Lenny knows is calling him Len, including his own parents. The name keeps sticking, through elementary school, into high school, and onto college. 

By the time Len is 17, everyone knows he’s going somewhere. The fact that that somewhere definitely doesn’t involve water was determined years before, on a weekend boating trip. It’s not that Len can’t swim; in fact, he’s like a fish, something that will save a certain pointy-eared half-breed’s life in the distant future. Then however, the 13-year-old was more interested in saving his baby cousin from drowning than worrying about his future. 

But, three days later, when the five foot tall boy strides into the kitchen and announces he’s decided to live up to his first name rather than his second, and become a healer, even his mother doesn’t argue, although she does permit herself a small sigh of something between resignation and regret. Len is her only child, and it looks like her sister Kathleen will be continuing the Horatio legacy with her three boys instead-something which the sisters may have had a small wager on (the aforementioned Horace, rescued from drowning by his older cousin, did indeed become an admiral in the world Navy, by which point he’d presumably learned how to swim better).

It’s a testament to the kind of boy Len was that neither of his parents ever even paused to question whether he would achieve his goal. Len said he was going to be a doctor, so he’d be a doctor. It was as simple as that. 

The name Len stuck until his third year of pre-med, when he met a young woman in a poli sci elective, who giggled prettily at his name, and called him Leo just to tease. By the time they’d been dating for three months, everyone in their social circle was calling him Leo. 

Only his parent’s still called him Len, a name that they’d continue to use until his third year of practicing medicine, when their world tilted permanently on its access. The name Len died with his father, turning to ashes on a stormy day in October, when a boy of twenty-seven ended his father’s torment, ending his own world as he did so. 

 

4\. Leo

From the moment he met Jocelyn Darnell, Len knew she was a woman who was used to always getting what she wanted. He found that quality endlessly attractive in the beginning. By the end, there was nothing he hated more. But that was to come. First, there was Joc and Leo. 

Everyone knew Joc and Leo, affectionately nicknamed JoLo by the college set. They got the best grades, gave the best parties, entertained all the right people, took all the right electives. They were going somewhere, and everyone knew it. The dauntingly handsome young med student and the gorgeous poli sci ice princess were unstoppable, cutting a dazzling figure wherever they went. 

Leo was completely in love, and proposed exactly when Joc expected him to, in their third year of dating. They got married the year he graduated medical school, while Jocelyn was studying Law at Princeton. The ceremony was perfect, held in Georgia on a picturesque spring afternoon, with blossoms falling across the shoulders of the equally stunning bride and groom. The event was the talk of society pages for weeks, Jocelyn beaming with pride, her mother glowing at her little girl’s triumph. 

The first cracks appeared in less than a year, although, in retrospect, Leo would suspect they’d been there from the very beginning, little fissures appearing in an already shaky foundation. Leo had been swept off his feet by Joc’s glamour, intelligence, and sophistication. For a boy who’d had his whole life planned from 13, Jocelyn Darnell had been the missing puzzle piece of a picture perfect future. He’d been envisioning their kids from their 2nd date. 

It’s this reality, the realization that he’d used Joc, at least to some extent, seeing a dream of a future, instead of her, that caused Leo to stay with Joc as long as he did. He was happy, in a way, with a skyrocketing surgical career, a baby on the way. It was enough. If there were moments when he felt stifled by all the parties and grandstanding, the high society lunches and fetes, well, it was part of being a spouse. He loved Jocelyn, so he’d grin and bear it to make her happy. 

By the time Joanna is born, three days before Leo’s 24th birthday, the cracks in her parent’s marriage have become yawning canyons, but Leo is so happy to be a father, he’s willing to build bridges to cross those canyons. Jocelyn is all too happy to maintain the status quo, and if she sometimes comes home smelling of town golden boy Clay Treadway’s aftershave, Leo pretends his sense of smell isn’t so good, and reads Joanna another bedtime story. 

This is their life for almost two years. It’s far from ideal, but they both stick with it. Jocelyn has a reputation, they both have careers. Not to mention a little angel with her daddy’s hazelnut brown eyes. Leo has no illusions about Jocelyn’s abilities to take his little girl away if he ever develops a better sense of smell, and so life goes on, until something happens to upset the status quo. 

In later years, in dark, slightly drunken moments, Leo will allow himself to wonder whether what happened next was fate’s way of giving him a sledgehammer worthy nudge to do something about his life. Because, as Leo bitterly acknowledges, if something drastic hadn’t happened, he’d still be married to Jocelyn Darnell, following two steps behind her like a trained poodle. This had been his dream after all, and if it hadn’t worked out the way he’d planned, well, life rarely did. But life has a way of giving people a nudge in the right direction. 

In his even darker moments, Leo will allow himself to be a tiny bit grateful for what happened. Because, as horrifyingly painful and life shattering as the events that transpired to shake up his mundane existence were, and as horrific as the consequences turned out to be, he couldn’t image life if he’d never been forced to leave behind his safe dreams, and reach out and grasp the stars. 

 

5\. Daddy

The horrific event happens when Leo is twenty-six, in his final year of accelerated residency. His world by this point consists of his job, his daughter, and ignoring Clay Treadway’s encroaching existence. 

This is all obliterated one afternoon when his father calls to inform him that his minor hand tremor is actually something far more serious. After that, Leo’s whole world revolves around saving the life of the man who helped create him. 

Leo becomes Len again, once more the determined little boy who wanted to heal the world, this time working single-mindedly to save the person who had once represented said little boy’s world. 

The months slip by, fall turning into spring. It’s the middle of a steamy Georgian summer when the terminal David McCoy begins asking his son to help ease his passing. By the time fall has rolled around again, he’s outright begging. It’s not until far too late that Len realizes his father wasn’t just begging for his own life, but Len’s as well. 

Len comes home for the first time in weeks in October to discover that Clay Treadway has moved into their bedroom. Instead of protesting, Len walks straight by both Joc and Clay, gathers up Joanna, and heads for his mother’s house. He doesn’t have the energy to be Leo anymore. 

Four days later, Len assists his father in ending his own life, allowing David to pass with dignity. Eleanor is at peace with David’s decision, and for a couple weeks, it looks like Len might still have some semblance of his world. 

Joanna has learned to talk while Leo was being consumed, and Len’s heart rejoices every time he hears his little girl sing out “daddy”. 

It all comes tumbling down a scant three weeks later, when one Doctor Mortimer Southby of Sidney, Australia publishes a highly secret study; the results of which is a complete cure for the disease that Len just watched literally eat away at his father. A cure which could have saved David McCoy’s life, even at that late date. Too late. 

Len doesn’t even remember when he starts drinking; he just knows he’s literally almost blind drunk when Jocelyn serves him with divorce papers. He sobers up enough to try to fight for his little girl, pulling the tattered remnants of Leo around him like armor, trying to remember how to act polished and sophisticated. But that was always Jocelyn’s world, not his, and she gets to keep her world, stealing his with power and influence, Clay Treadway standing proud beside her- another man’s wife- for all the world to see. 

Leo dies completely when Jocelyn takes away his little princess, and any remaining sparks of ambition, lust, and even love that where kindled so long ago by that sparkling, green eyed young woman in poli sci turn to ash inside his soul. He doesn’t even get to say goodbye to his just gone three year old. It will be many a year before he sees Joanna again. 

Of all the things Len regrets in his life, the fact he never again hears his little Jo-Jo call him daddy will always be one of the greatest. 

With Leo dead, and “daddy” denied to him, he becomes Len again. Until that is also ripped from him, when Eleanor looks him in the eye, and says she forgives him. Len sees the truth in her eyes, but also the bitter reality that accompanies it. She can forgive him, but she can’t love someone who took away her husband. Even if that someone is her own son. She never calls him Len again, and he never calls her Ma again. They never speak of it, but any real relationship he had left with his mother died that day. 

Another one of Len’s many regrets, something which is entirely outside of his control, is the fact that he never gets a chance to truly find out whether his Ma would ever have started loving him again, or if indeed she’d ever truly stopped. He never gets to find out due to the simple-but oh so complicated- fact that Eleanor McCoy dies during his second year at the academy, three years after they last spoke, at her husband’s funeral.

The official cause of death is heart failure, but Len knows that while the problem was indeed with her heart, it was more about breaking than failing, and the breakage occurred several years before her actual physical death. Regardless of the cause, Eleanor’s death carries a finality that is eternal, ending any chance Len had at redemption, and leaving him haunted by the possibility that his mother died hating him. 

The last straw in a very large bundle, which finally and unequivocally pushes Len’s feelings for Jocelyn Darnell-now Treadway-from loathing into outright hate, is the fact Joc doesn’t bother to tell Len about his mother’s death until three months after the fact, long after she’s gone and buried. 

The fact no one else in his family thought to contact him will be a bitter pill which Len never quite manages to fully swallow. His mother’s death ends any kind of connection Len might have had left with his blood family. 

Fortunately, he isn’t alone when this happens, with the tentatively trembling opening strands of a very different kind of family beginning to form between him and a certain devil may care son of a living legend, a boy who’s own blood family disintegrated along with his father the day he was born. A family which would withstand the test of time, despite, or perhaps due, to it’s foundation in something other than familial blood.  
However it happened, any remaining fragments of Len that might have survived his father’s death vanished with Eleanor’s passing. 

6\. Leonard 

After his father’s funeral, broken almost beyond recognition, with his dreams in ashes and his world in tatters, Leonard McCoy gathers up the only things left to him, his abilities as a doctor and his christen name, and does something a McCoy is never supposed to do. He runs. 

Well, he stumbles would be more accurate. He drinks himself into a semi-permanent stupor from Georgia to Iowa, when a half run-over Starfleet officer shakes him out of said stupor by literally falling down and bleeding all over his shoes. 

Turns out, saving someone’s life can have far-reaching and semi-disastrous (or world changing, depending on how you look at it) consequences, particularly when that person is the aide to Starfleet’s golden boy Captain, who just happens of be on a recruiting trip in the middle of nowhere Iowa of all places. 

People will later say that Chris Pike did the impossible when he recruited George Kirk’s delinquent son, but in reality, that was a cakewalk in comparison to his recruitment drive for one Doctor Leonard McCoy, renowned Surgeon and Aviaphobe.

Leonard never does tell Pike what is was that made him accept, partly because he doesn’t quite know himself. He suspects it may have had something to do with his latent maternal navy blood, surfacing for a hail Mary pass in the eleventh hour, but in reality, it probably had more to do with David McCoy’s Len, a last dying echo inside a man who had once been a little boy whose only desire in life was to heal people. 

Long story short, Starfleet would allow him to be a doctor again. It would also give him a new, better world, but he didn’t know that yet. Leonard McCoy was done with dreams. 

But, even Starfleet required first names (despite Uhura’s valiant attempt to go without), and with all viable shortened forms long exhausted (he refused to stoop as low as the abominable “Nard” his cousin had once suggested), Leonard McCoy became simply Leonard, no abbreviating please. 

He would remain Leonard to all but a select few (two) for the rest of his life, but it would always remain just a name. It would never be who he was. That honour would be reserved for two nons de plume, a title and a name, assigned to him by a pair of blue eyes and a set of green pointed ears, words which would forever define his heart, and rule his soul, much like the men who bestowed them on him. 

7\. McCoy

It’s worth noting that Pike almost loses Leonard McCoy before he ever even has him, something which would have had far more momentous consequences for the state of the universe than either of them could ever have predicted at the time. 

Pike’s near universe imploding slipup was very simple. He called him McCoy. 

Although he would bear David McCoy’s surname for the rest of his life, Leonard would never again call himself a McCoy-that right ended when he pushed the hypo into his father’s hand. Any pride he had in the name died that day, along with his worthiness to bear it. 

8\. Commander, Captain, Admiral, oh my!

Despite many people’s firm arguments to the contrary, Starfleet is still a military organization-or it certainly was then-, complete with ranks for everybody, even the simple old country doctors. Being a doctor already when he’s recruited, Leonard automatically makes the rank of Commander when his graduation is hastily pushed through after the Narada “Incident”. 

The first time he’s addressed as commander, the doctor actually does a double take-the person is practically shouting by this point from repeatedly being ignored. In fact, the only person Leonard ever really responds to when called by his rank is Spock. 

It doesn’t matter how many ranks he gains, how many rungs he inadvertently climbs, despite his and others best efforts-the ranks never quite seem to fit. 

Starfleet may have recruited Leonard McCoy, but they never quite managed to turn him into a soldier. 

 

+1. Doctor

Leonard McCoy graduated medical school in 2251, and would be addressed by the title of Doctor from then until his death well over a hundred years later. That’s a rather long time for anyone to be addressed as anything-he’s probably called Doctor more times in his life than he’s called by his actual name, or any variation therein. 

So, he’ll always consider it one of life’s great mysteries, and ironies, that he’ll always associate the title of Doctor with one individual in particular. In later years, Leonard is never able to hear the word without looking around for a certain pointy-eared Hobgoblin.  
He’s never quite sure when is started, but he suspects it might have been when a graying to white haired old Vulcan approached him at Jim’s first promotion ceremony, and greeted him with eyes brimming with uncharacteristic- for his species- tears. At the time, Leonard attributed this unexpected display of emotion to the unique extenuating circumstances of recent near total genocide. Still, he couldn’t help but mark the fact that he’d never, before or since, heard anyone infuse a single world with such emotion. 

That old man, who it would take him years to realize was speaking in a voice that was already eerily familiar, said the word “Doctor” as if Leonard was the only person on earth who’d ever had the honour of being addressed that way. 

Three years into their first five-year mission, Leonard has gotten used to Spock calling him Doctor. He thinks he might actually faint from shock if the man ever attached any form of name to that title. 

It isn’t until four years into their second five-year mission that Leonard realizes he’s never heard Spock refer to anyone else by that title, and god knows they’ve been to enough scientific and diplomatic conferences in the preceding decade to meet an entire army of people with that particular prefix before their name.

It the century and a half Leonard knows Spock, he never hears the man address anyone but himself by that sacred title. That is an honour that is reserved for Leonard alone. Of course, Spock never acknowledges this fact, something which doesn’t even change when Leonard has carried the man’s soul- and that was no mean feat, communicating intimately with someone’s soul, and yet never addressing the person by name, although this does finally clue Leonard in to the significance of old emotional guy. Considering this occurs some thirty years after he attended said man’s funeral by Spock’s side, Leonard considers this more than a little late notice. 

So no, Spock and him never exactly declare undying love for each other. In fact, they continue arguing well into the next century. But, in the end, that’s kinda the point. They stick, for lack of a better world, and stick like glue. In a universe of immeasurable change, with people passing in and out of both their admittedly ridiculously long lives, they are each other’s constant. The one person who never changes. The one person who’s always there. 

In a world of uncertainty, where the universe won’t even grant Leonard the decency of allowing him to die within an even remotely normal human lifespan, Spock is Leonard’s consolation prize, if you will. What a prize. Leonard spends most of his last century wondering if the universe is simply screwing with him just for the heck of it. Occasionally though, he pauses to be grateful. As consolation prizes go, Spock turns out to be a pretty darn awesome one. Not that either of them will ever admit that. 

(Because, in a world where he’s too much like the wrong race to ever truly be accepted by either, Leonard is, in a way, Spock’s ultimate consolation prize too. He’s the one man who never stops reminding Spock of how different he is, but yet somehow manages to help Spock carve out a place in the universe for himself in the process). 

Spock outlives his “Doctor” by three whole days. Leonard, who by this point almost thinks of himself as “Doctor”(something which absolutely, definitely doesn’t have anything to do with Jim’s life long obsession with a certain fictional 20th century alien either), has never been more grateful for anything in his entire, ridiculously long life. 

+2. Bones

Bones. It’s a ridiculous nickname, something which Leonard will always be the first to acknowledge. The way he gets it is even more ridiculous-a certified Aviaphobe boarding a flying death trap bound for an organization that operates within his greatest fear, who just happens to sit beside bloody, and abraded kid who makes a point of reminding Leonard of the irony of it all, and then proceeds to give him a nickname based off a terrible throw away one liner, a name which will come to define who Leonard is. And the best part is, that kid just might be his soulmate. 

Ridiculous. 

Most people would be running screaming for the hills by this point, and yet somehow, both the name and the kid stick-like super glue. Three years, numerous drunken confessions, bloody fights, tear filled triumphs and sun tinged moments later, they’re still stuck, although by this point the adhesive must be a rare type of plasti-cement alloy. 

It’s sometime in the their second year at the academy that Bones slips up and almost introduces himself as Bones McCoy that he realizes he’s in trouble. He doesn’t start panicking until he realizes he’s also begun to think of himself as Bones, and has been doing so for an undeterminable amount of time. 

By this point, Bones is so caught up in the roller coaster that is Jim Kirk, he wouldn’t know how to get off if he tried. And he’s not sure he wants too. 

Being Jim’s Bones is freeing in a way Leonard hasn’t felt since he was seven years old and simply known as Lenny. In a lifetime of being defined by names and titles picked out for him by other people, it’s Bones, a completely arbitrary, throw away name assigned to him by a genius repeat offender with enough daddy issues to fill the state of Iowa, and an even bigger hero complex, that stuck. 

Bones never really stops to ponder why this might be- he simply lets Spock ponder it for him. Admittedly, he never thought consciously about any of this before, but when Spock introduces a hypothesis over a game of chess in the ninth decade of their acquaintanceship, Leonard realizes the sneaky pointy eared devil still has the ability to take his breath away with the simplicity of his logic(and yeah, that isn’t ironic at all). 

There’s no denying that Jim is his soulmate-their more than half century long relationship is the greatest part of Bones’ life. He wouldn’t have traded one second of that time, from start to finish. They never called each other by any sort of arbitrary societal title-they were never partners or husbands. Jim was his “kid”(no, not that way), and he was Jim’s Bones (not that way either), and that worked just fine for them. 

What they were to each other was one of those unanswered questions within their relationship, like which one of them actually saved the other first, or whether they saved each other. Whatever they were, it was always the two of them against the world (later three, but Spock was a complication they never quite knew how to define either). 

Before the man died, Leonard had a conversation with older Spock (who he only knew as Selek then). It made no sense to him at the time, but when his own Spock finally bothered to clue him in several decades later, it turned out to have been perhaps one of three of the most defining conversations of his entire life. 

(Conversations one and two go to a certain threat to throw up on someone on a shuttle bound for what he thought then was certain doom, and a near argument involving raised eyebrows and references to prize stallions). 

They were at Jim’s third promotion ceremony, and Selek cornered Bones at the buffet table. While Bones contemplated whether the spinach and alfalfa canapés were worth a try, Selek proceeded to tell Bones a long winded story about a triad of inseparable men, remarkable individuals, the leaders in their fields, who defined each other in every sense of the word. He spoke of the lines drawn within the relationship, the lines which eventually caused it to crack almost irrevocably.

Selek came close to tears again (the significance of this escaped Bones at the time, as he’d had a grand total of three conversations with Selek in the previous decade-something to do with preserving timelines, a comment that’s significance Bones chose to ignore for more than half a century), when he described how heartbreakingly dangerous it was to define one’s self by one’s relationships to other people, and then have to figure out how to live without those people, when life has moved on. 

At the time, Bones wrote it off as a bizarre warning on the dangers of codepencency, and went back to his canapés. With the wisdom of knowledge and years however, Bones came to realize that Spock was asking him to prevent a tragedy he himself was forced to live through. Of course, it never really became an issue for Bones, for one very simple fact. In Selek’s universe, Jim was the center of their triumvirate, a volatile ball of molten brilliance mixed with arrogance and self assurance-that Jim hadn’t truly needed anyone. Thos men had all defined each other in success, but in life, they’d been unequal. Too unequal. Age had made them a family, not blood and tears. 

No, in Bones’ universe, Selek’s warning was an unnecessary one for two reasons. The first being that the Jim and Bones of the universe Nero cracked were already broken when they met each other. In this universe, where Bones was the one with brown eyes, and Jim’s were a haunting blue, where so many things were almost the same, and yet so very, ever so slightly different, where Spock was the stable one, a half breed boy who fought back instead of internalizing brittle pain to the point of nearly crumbling, the product of an inexplicably more openly loving father and a passionate and determined mother. Nero somehow fixed Spock when he messed with the universe, just as he somehow broke Jim and Bones. 

Although, when Bones contemplates the physics of space time and the multiverse-some of Spock wore off during their shared soul cohabitation in Leonard’s body- even he has to admit that Nero can’t be blamed for everything. Afterall, Bones was born six years before Spock and Nero broke into this universe, creating a shattering parallel. In the end, some of the differences must have been there already. It’s a strangely freeing realization, for both Jim and Bones. 

Whatever the reasons, in this universe, Jim and Bones had to put each other back together, and in doing so they melded their edges together forever. Spock fit between the cracks like a stabilizing buoy, the steadying force instead of the broken heart. He became a crucial part of their matrix, but he wasn’t their whole heart-although he may have been a part of it. 

Later, he would become something indefinable to Bones, who, even fifty years after Jim’s death, would always think of himself as Bones. So, while Spock would one day prove to Bones that there could be life after Jim Kirk, just as Bones proved to Spock there could be life after Nyota Uhura, when Selek gave his speech, he needn’t have bothered. Or so Bones always thought. 

But, old Spock, despite the white hair, was nothing if not sharp, and he got Leonard wondering. Who was he, if not Jim’s Bones? Or David’s Len, or Spock’s Doctor? 

Was he merely the product his relationship’s with other people? This question might have haunted Bones, if he’d been several decades younger and more naive at the time he first thought the question up. As it was, the answer was simple. He didn’t even have to think about it. Spock already gave it too him. 

He was all those things, David’s Len, Jim’s Bones, Spock’s Doctor, even Joc’s Leo. They were all things that defined him, like the people who gave him the names in the first place. But, the important thing he always had to remember. The thing Spock told him, the thing Selek was trying to tell him, without ever realizing it, was that every one of those names, for all they were chosen by other people, were simply who he was. 

Afterall, in the end, Spock was trying to say that we’re all the products of other people’s names for us. And those people who gave Bones those names weren’t defining him, he was defining himself, by choosing to be that person, to those people. He chose to be Len, Doctor, Bones. Nobody choose for him, not Jim, not Spock, not Starfleet, not his parents, nobody.

And somehow, in this universe, where everything is so much more broken on the surface, and yet ever so slightly, enormously better just under that surface, where everyone was so much more broken, they managed somehow, inexplicably, to make their own versions of happy endings, and make them work. 

Fine. Doctor Bones

Of course, this startling epiphany has no real bearing on who Bones is. He’s a doctor, not a dictionary entry. He doesn’t need to be defined. 

Although, if somebody was attempting, there is one incident he can recall that deserves a distinct mention. 

It’s during a rare earth side shore leave, in the middle of their second five-year mission, when the Enterprise and her crew’s fame has cooled from media darlings into planetary legends. Bones is walking along the streets of a rebuilt San Fran; trying not to see the ghosts of people he’s lost (hard with the anniversary of Nero only days away, and wasn’t it so convenient of Starfleet Command to have them back in time for the ceremonies, smiling for the cameras like trained canaries).

Bones isn’t really paying attention to the present, but the voice of the little girl is so shrill it could have pierced glass (and he so isn’t going down that particular path of haunting memories labeled “daddy!”-Jo’s in her teens at this point, and he’s only spoken to her once over the comm, the first glimpse of his little girl he’s seen since she was five, due no doubt to the machinations of a certain Pointy eared bastard’s father. She was the picture of sullen.)

Back in the present, Bones breaks out of his musings in time to see a chocolate ice-cream smeared little girl of six or seven pulling on her mother’s hand and gesturing wildly at him from across the street. She’s babbling at top speed, and her mother is trying desperately to shush her, but one childish utterance will stay with Bones forever-“look Mummy, it’s the man from the news feeds, it’s Doctor Bones!” 

Out of the mouths of babes indeed.


End file.
